PHP

PHP is a server-side scripting language for creating interactive web pages. The acronym PHP derives from Personal Home Page, but is now defined as "PHP: Hypertext Pre-Processor" (it means "something to handle data before it becomes HTML"[1] ). Unlike HTML, JavaScript and others, PHP is a Server-Side scripting language. It most always is processed into HTML for use in a web page.

PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages in the Open Source world, which is often used together with Apache on Linux or on other paid platforms such as Microsoft IIS on Windows.

PHP recognizes variable names within strings, which are enclosed in double quotes. Since all variables begin with a dollar sign, it is easy to embed one string inside another. This is the preferred way to create HTML output.

Databases

PHP is compatible with multiple databases, MySQL being the most popular. They go together so well that it's tempting to think of PHP as primarily middleware to link MySQL on the back end to HTML on the front end.

Overall, PHP is compatible with:

MySQL

PostgreSQL

MS-SQL 2000

Oracle

SQLite

and many others.

PHP and MySQL

PHP and MySQL are both free software, and they work together well for making database-backed websites.

Methods for PHP to access MySQL databases include mysqli and PDOs.

Books

How to Do Everything with PHP & MySQL, Vikram Vaswani (McGraw-Hill, 2005)